The present invention relates to a card reader for at least either recording or reproducing data onto or out of an information recording medium, such as a card.
By virtue of their carrying convenience, cards have long been used for many different purposes, and a wide variety of cards are available. They include, for instance, prepaid cards such as telephone cards and railway ticket cards, commuter tickets, coupon tickets, point cards, bank cards, cash cards, credit cards, driver""s licenses, membership cards and ID cards.
Such a card has a memory section, typically a magnetic recording layer, an optical recording layer or an IC memory, for recording and holding such information as identifying information, account balance and earned points. Whereas information recorded on any such memory section is reproduced by a dedicated card reader, the card possessor cannot directly check the information because information recorded on a magnetic recording layer, an optical recording layer or an IC memory is invisible.
The prior art provides various ways of visually marking such otherwise invisible information. For instance, the information may be printed on the card surface by one or another of various printing means such as an ink jet, thermoelectric or laser beam printer, or write once type marking may be used, such as forming a thermosensitive color developing layer on the card surface in advance and thermally recording the information thereon. The write once type marking cannot present much information because of the limitation of the space available for marking on the card surface. In view of this limitation, more recently, rewritable marking methods have come to be used. For example, a liquid crystal marking device may be formed on the card, or a thermally reversible material permitting repeated thermal printing and erasion is used for the marking purpose. By using one or another of these marking methods, not only can invisibly recorded information be visually marked on a magnetic recording layer, an optical recording layer or an IC memory but also can new information, such as an advertisement or a promotional announcement, be additionally marked in a visual way.
Furthermore, in addition to the wide variety of the uses, information recording systems and marking methods of these cards, the materials of card substrates, the position of the memory section such as a magnetic stripe or an IC chip, and the standards on the size and thickness of the card are no less diverse. The card materials, for instance, include plastics, paper and synthetic paper such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyvinyl chloroacetate (PVCA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polycarbonate (PC) and biodegradable materials. According to JISX6301 applicable to all ID cards and JISX6303 applicable to IC cards with external terminal, the thickness is required to be 0.76 mmxc2x10.08 mm. In a commonly known configuration, two 0.28 mm thick hard vinyl chloride sheets are stacked one over the other, and a 0.1 mm thick hard vinyl chloride sheet is stuck to each side of the paired sheets. A card of some type has an account number, expiration date and owner""s name marked in an embossed way, i.e. by physically embossing parts of the card substrate to let the signs of such information show up. Besides such cards having a hard plastic as the substrate, prepaid cards, typically telephone cards, are thinner, ranging in thickness from about 0.20 to 0.28 mm.
Thus, cards have become diverse indeed. A device having functions to pick up (read) information out of, to record (write) information onto or rewrite information to be marked on such cards is a card reader.
One example of card reader according to the prior art will be cited here. FIG. 18 is a sectional side elevation view of the conventional card reader. The following description will refer to FIG. 18.
A rewrite card provided with a thermally reversible material or the like is used as a card 1, and the card 1 here has a magnetic recording layer, too. A rewrite card has a configuration wherein a visible image is formed by, for instance, heating to or above a prescribed temperature, and the formed image can be made invisible by heating the card within a prescribed temperature range for a prescribed length of time.
The card 1 inserted through an inlet 2 is carried within a passage 7, which is composed of a guide assembly 6, by drive rollers 3, 4 and 5 and pinch rollers 8, 10 and 12 opposite the respective drive rollers.
Reference numeral 56 denotes a data recording/reproducing unit for recording or reproducing magnetic information onto or out of the card 1; and 58, a magnetic head pinch roller opposite the magnetic head 56. A printing section 37 for printing on the card 1 is fitted to a thermal head holder 60 and rotated by a shaft 96.
Further, an erasing section 49 for erasing information printed on the card is fitted to an erasing head holder 79, which is linked by a shaft 97 to the thermal head holder 60 and is interlocked with a thermal head 37.
The thermal head 37 and the erasing head 49 are so configured as to be protruded into and recessed from the passage 7 by a lifting motor 98 via a cam 99.
When printing on or erasing from the card 1, the thermal head 37 and the erasing head 49 are pressed and energized by springs, which are hooked onto holders, via the card 1 against a platen 31 positioned opposite the thermal head 37 and a roller 43 positioned opposite the erasing head 49, and protruded into the passage 7 to print or erase prescribed information onto or out of the card 1.
Upon completion of printing or erasion, the thermal head 37 and the erasing head 49 are recessed from the passage 7 by the lifting motor 98 via the cam 99. The permissible upper limit of the pinching load of the thermal head 37 and the erasing head 49 is about 5 N because of constrains of the mechanism.
Each such card reader according to the prior art is designed or set for exclusive use with a particular card type. For instance, thinner cards of 0.20 to 0.28 mm in thickness are used with a card reader exclusively intended for them, and similarly thicker cards of 0.68 to 0.84 mm have their own card reader intended specifically for them. However, these conventional card readers involve the following problems.
As mentioned above, a great variety of cards are in use, and they differ in thickness, substrate material, the presence or absence and, if present, the position of a memory section such as a magnetic recording layer, an optical recording layer or an IC memory, and the presence or absence and, if present, the position of a marking section such as a thermosensitive color developing layer, a liquid crystal marking device or a thermally reversible material.
In a card reader exclusively intended for cards of, for instance, 0.20 to 0.28 mm in thickness, the optimal processing conditions are set for thin cards of 0.20 to 0.28 mm in thickness. More specifically, the pinching forces of the pinch rollers opposite the drive rollers on the passage, that of the magnetic head pinch roller opposite the magnetic head in the data recording/reproducing unit and those of the thermal head and the erasing head are set.
If it is tried to process a 0.68 to 0.84 mm thick card with this card reader optimally set for thinner cards of 0.20 to 0.28 mm in thickness, it is very likely for some trouble to arise in the card reader such as a fault in carriage, printing, erasion, recording or reproduction. This would be due to the difference not only in the thickness of the card but also in the flexibility or the like of the card.
Thus, the setting of the pinching force in carriage, printing, erasion and data recording/reproduction cannot be equal for a 0.68 to 0.84 mm thick card and a thinner card of 0.20 to 0.28 mm in thickness, and fine adjustment for the differences is not easy with any conventional card reader. In particular, a 0.68 to 0.84 mm thick card is less flexible than a thinner card of 0.20 to 0.28 mm in thickness. This means that if the thicker card is warped or otherwise deformed, it is more likely than the flexible thinner card to invite some trouble in the card reader such as a fault in carriage, printing, erasion, recording or reproduction. Since it is not easy to adjust the pinching force in a card reader of any conventional configuration, satisfactory carriage, printing, erasion and so forth would be impossible.
Because of this problem, if a conventional card reader is designed for cards of a specific thickness, a different kind of card reader needs to be used for handling cards of another thickness. Or if the card reader is adaptable by altering the setting, it will be troublesome, and moreover not easy as mentioned above, to alter the setting every time a card of a different thickness is to be used, resulting in virtual impossibility to handle cards of different thicknesses with a single card reader. Anyhow, as many different types of card readers have to be made ready as the types of cards.
In addition to these, there further is the following problem.
The printable area of a thermally reversible material or the like formed on the card varies with the use of the card. In the card reader of the above-described configuration the widths and positions of the printing head and the erasing head are fixed, resulting in a lack of freedom. As the erasing head is linked to the thermal head, their replacement with heads of different widths would require disassembling into small parts, and has to be followed by accurate balancing between the two heads. Especially if a narrower head than the card is fitted, the pinching force the card receives from the head will not be uniform, making it impossible to subject the card to printing or erasion in a satisfactory state.
Moreover, such a card reader is not adequately compatible with cards having embossed signs, allowing no satisfactory printing, erasion, carriage or the like. Particularly if the pinching force on the card is too strong, the printing head and the erasing head may shave off the embossed parts and be damaged by doing so. Conversely, if the pinching force on the card is too weak, printing and/or erasion trouble may occur.
Further in order to achieve compatibility with IC cards used in electronic transactions in recent years, another IC card reader is required with the consequence that not only a large installation space is required but also the exchange of information would require connection of the two card readers, which would complicate the system.
In such a card reader according to the prior art, rollers for correcting any warp of the card would have to pinch the card with a very strong force in order to achieve sufficient correction to obtain satisfactory print quality. However, if the pinching forces of the rollers for straightening the card are strong, there will arise problems when no printing is done on the card, such as failure to properly record and/or reproduce data with magnetic heads or to carry the card over the passage.
The present invention, attempted to solve the above-described problems with the prior art, is intended to provide a card reader compatible with many different kinds of cards and excelling in card carrying performance.
According to the present invention, there is provided a card reader including: a card passage; carrying means for moving a card within the passage; data recording/reproducing means for at least either recording data onto or reproducing data out of the card present in the passage; image forming means for forming a visible image on the card; and image erasing means for erasing any visible image formed on the card, and having a configuration of handling of cards differing in thickness.